Unforgiveness is like drinking poison yourself and waiting for the other person to die.
Marianne Williamson
As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others.
Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness.
Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.
In every community, there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart, there is the power to do it.
Try to see the good in others. When you're tempted to judge someone, make an effort to see their goodness. Your willingness to look for the best in people will subconsciously bring it forth.
Maturity includes the recognition that no one is going to see anything in us that we don't see in ourselves. Stop waiting for a producer. Produce yourself.
The top of one mountain is always the bottom of another.
The Law of Divine Compensation posits that this is a self-organizing and self-correcting universe: the embryo becomes a baby, the bud becomes a blossom, the acorn becomes an oak tree. Clearly, there is some invisible force that is moving every aspect of reality to its next best expression.
The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.
The key to abundance is meeting limited circumstances with unlimited thoughts.
You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure about you. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us.
Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.
Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.
Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.
The 'Course in Miracles' says one day you will realize that death is not the punishment but the reward. And it says that birth is not the beginning of life but a continuation. And physical death is not the end of life but a continuation.
There's nothing more powerful than a woman who knows how to contain her power and not let it leak, standing firmly within it in mystery and silence. A woman who talks too much sheds her allure.
Our key to transforming anything lies in our ability to reframe it.
Empires always have the hubris to think they are indestructible, when in fact they are always unsustainable.
Old Newtonian physics claimed that things have an objective reality separate from our perception of them. Quantum physics, and particularly Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, reveal that, as our perception of an object changes, the object itself literally changes.
Love is all around us all the time. Love is the ethers that we swim in. Love is the amniotic fluid of the soul.
As a cell contains a natural intelligence by which it fosters the healthy functioning of the body, I, too, have natural intelligence that fosters the perfect unfolding of my life.
The goal of spiritual practice is full recovery, and the only thing you need to recover from is a fractured sense of self.
In the hands of the ego, marriage is a prison. It is exclusive. It is a place where people are constantly reminded of their failures and limited by the energies of another person. It is rife with judgment and blame.
The speed of change today is faster than the human psyche seems able to handle, and it's increasingly difficult to reconcile the rhythms of our personal lives with the rapidity of a twenty-four-hour news cycle.
Some men know that a light touch of the tongue, running from a woman's toes to her ears, lingering in the softest way possible in various places in between, given often enough and sincerely enough, would add immeasurably to world peace.
May we not succumb to thoughts of violence and revenge today, but rather to thoughts of mercy and compassion. We are to love our enemies that they might be returned to their right minds.
As someone who has faced as much disappointment as most people, I've come to trust not that events will always unfold exactly as I want, but that I will be fine either way.
Everything we do is infused with the energy in which we do it. If we're frantic, life will be frantic. If we are peaceful, life will be peaceful.
Enlightenment is the key to everything, and it is the key to intimacy, because it is the goal of true authenticity.
Abolition didn't just happen - people made it happen. Women's suffrage didn't just happen - people made it happen. Civil Rights legislation didn't just happen - people made it happen. And marriage equality didn't just happen, either - people made it happen.
In 'Healing the Soul of America,' I wrote about Gandhi's notion of soul force in politics and why it matters to stand on your truth.
Institutional memory is important in any organization, but so are fresh ideas.
Hope lies in having more faith in the power of God to heal us than in the power of anything to hurt or destroy us. In realizing that as children of God we are bigger than our problems, we have the power at last to confront them.
Relationships are eternal. The 'separation' is another chapter in the relationship. Often, letting go of the old form of the relationship becomes a lesson in pure love much deeper than any would have learned had the couple stayed together.
The ego mind both professes its desire for love and does everything possible to repel it, or if it gets here anyway, to sabotage it. That is why dealing with issues like control, anger, and neediness is the most important work in preparing ourselves for love.
Nothing liberates our greatness like the desire to help, the desire to serve.
We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be?
We can always choose to perceive things differently. You can focus on what's wrong in your life, or you can focus on what's right.
We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present.
Take stock of your thoughts and behavior. Each night ask yourself, when were you negative when you could have been positive? When did you withhold love when you might have given it? When did you play a neurotic game instead of behaving in a powerful way? Use this process to self-correct.
We live in a world of constant juxtaposition between joy that's possible and pain that's all too common. We hope for love and success and abundance, but we never quite forget that there is always lurking the possibility of disaster.
Each of us has an inner room where we can visit to be cleansed of fear-based thoughts and feelings. This room, the holy of holies, is a sanctuary of light.
There's a certain je ne sais quoi that Americans have in spades - a we-can-do-anything spirit that makes so many things possible for all of us. We're rugged individualists, aspirational in nature, and we like to think for ourselves.
One of the shocks of a 50th birthday is realizing the fundamental fact that your youth is irrevocably over.
Martin Luther King said it was time to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of human civilization. I don't think anyone is calling Martin Luther King a New Age woo-woo.
Self-awareness is not self-centeredness, and spirituality is not narcissism. 'Know thyself' is not a narcissistic pursuit.
An enchanted love, an awakened love, between two people is a blessing on the entire world.
Prayer is the medium of miracles; in whatever way works for you, pray right now.
